Q'anjob'al (Maya): Illinois Language Resource Initiative

Q'anjob'al is a Mayan language spoken in the Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
Pictured here is Santa Eulalia, a city that is home to many speakers of Q'anjob'al.
Photo credit: Ryan Shosted, 2008.

Summary

Q'anjob'al is spoken by people in Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. Native speakers tend to hail from the following municipalities of Guatemala: Santa Eulalia (Jolom Konob'), San Pedro Soloma (Tz'uluma'), Santa Cruz Barillas (Yalmotx), San Juan Ixcoy, San Miguel Acatán, and San Rafael la Independencia. A recent news report (Connolly 2017) indicates that there are approximately 550 speakers of Q'anjob'al currently living in Champaign County, Illinois. Immigration of Q'anjob'al speakers to the United States appears to be increasing (Medina 2019).

Beginning in 2008, a group of professors and students at the University of Illinois began collaborating with members of the Q'anjob'al community in Champaign-Urbana. That collaboration has resulted in classes for graduate and undergraduate students at the University, co-taught with a member of the Q'anjob'al community; a variety of Q'anjob'al-language materials; and public presentations and academic publications. Some of our work is mentioned on this webpage; some of the materials are made publicly available here, as well.

We continue to work together with our friends and neighbors in the Maya community of Champaign County to promote mutual understanding. Please reach out to us with requests for further information, clarification, or correction.

Linguistic Outreach Materials

Contributors: Joyce Davila, Mateo Diego, Luis Esteban, Jill Hallett, Katie Hutchison, Andrés Juan, Korinta Maldonado, Ryan Shosted, Children of the Church of St. Mary, Urbana High School Students

Q'anjob'al Alphabet Book: Tzib' yul ko Q'anjob'al [Let's write in Q'anjob'al]. Andrés Mateo Juan and Jill Hallett. 2009.
Q'anjob'al Alphabet Poster: Tzib' yul ko Q'anjob'al [Let's write in Q'anjob'al]. Jill Hallett, Andrés Mateo Juan and Ryan Shosted. 2009.
Q'anjob'al Folk Tale with Glossary: Naq' Unin Ilom Kalnel [The Boy Who Watches Sheep]. Q'anjob'al children of the Church of St. Mary (Champaign), Luis Esteban, Mateo Diego and Jill Hallett. 2009.
Beginner's Q'anjob'al Vocabulary (English / Q'anjob'al). Jill Hallett. 2009.
Some additional resources in Q'anjob'al for school teachers (including a guide to pronunciation). Ryan Shosted. 2013.
Expressions in Q'anjob'al, Chuj, and K'iche': Tzet Yok A B'i? [What's your name?]. Urbana High School students, Joyce Davila, Katie Hutchison, Korinta Maldonado, Ryan Shosted, and Jennifer Zhang. 2018.
Q'anjob'al Folk Tale (spoken and illustrated): Yab'ixal Ix Txajul Ewul [The Story of Saint Eulalia]. Urbana High School students, Joyce Davila, Korinta Maldonado and Ryan Shosted. 2019.

Watx' In K'ul: Q'anjob'al Health Care Terminology Project

In Spring 2016, Andrés Juan and Ryan Shosted co-taught a course (LING 490$RKS) called "Language Documentation" that focused on health care terminology in Q'anjob'al. Undergraduate students in the course learned the tools and techniques linguists use to document the world's under-resourced languages. The linguistic resources we gathered in the context of this course are intended as one of many possible starting points for conversations in Q'anjob'al regarding health care.

Please note: We encourage interested parties to seek the expertise of local Q'anjob'al-language interpreters to best communicate with and support the Q'anjob'al community.

Academic Publications

Maldonado, Korinta Goti and Ryan K. Shosted. Submitted 2019. The Maya Classroom in Diaspora: Blending community-based research and advocacy in Champaign County, Illinois.
Shosted, Ryan. 2011. Towards a glottalic theory of Mayan. In H. Avelino (ed.) New Perspectives in Mayan Linguistics. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambrige Scholar's Publishing, pp. 80-113.
Hallett, Jill. 2012. It's a special kind of frog: Co-creating teaching materials for the Q'anjob'al diaspora. Proceedings of the Symposium on Teaching and Learning Indigenous Languages of Latin America 2011.

Presentations

Shosted, Ryan. March 7, 2019. Cham ochej cha kuyu Q'anjob'al? [Do you want to study Q'anjob'al?]. Central High School Spanish Honors Club. Champaign, Illinois.
Shosted, Ryan. Sept. 29, 2011. Documenting the Q'anjob'al language. Global Health Initiative Seminar: Wuqu' Kawoq: Multi-Disciplinary Healthcare in Guatemala. Urbana, Illinois.
Shosted, Ryan. Q'anjob'al in the classroom: What K-12 educators might learn from linguists. 2010. Urbana School District #116, Winter Institute Day. Urbana, IL.
Shosted, Ryan. Origins of the voiceless uvular implosive in Q'anjob'al. 2009. Conference on the Endangered Languages of Central and North America. Salt Lake City, UT.
Shosted, Ryan. On endangered sounds and endangered languages: Why phonetic language documentation still matters. 2009. Department of Linguistics, Brigham Young University (Invited talk).
Shosted, Ryan. The Implosive impulse in Mayan. 2009. Department of Linguistics, University of California San Diego (Invited talk).
Shosted, Ryan. Uvular variation in Q'anjob'al. 2009. Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas. San Francisco, CA.
Shosted, Ryan. Linguistic structures of Q'anjob'al. 2008. Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Urbana-Champaign, IL.

Support